I then stalked out of his office.

  It was clear to me that I’d been neatly mousetrapped. When, in our first round, I had told Keefer that if I were forced to do the book without a grant, I would still get my royalties but that the school would not get its overhead; Keefer had outmaneuvered me. He let the grant go through and collected the overhead and then intended to keep my part of the grant as well.

  Had I applied for my twenty-five hundred dollars the instant the grant had become official, as anyone else would have done, it might have gone through, for Bill Boyd would have been department head and Keefer might have felt he couldn’t rely on Bill’s co-operation. Because I had allowed my conscience to hold me back from trying to get the money until I had earned, it, I had played into Keefer’s hands. With Sinex in place, Keefer expected no trouble.

  On the other hand, Keefer had, to some extent, outsmarted himself as well. Had he resisted the temptation to win the small stake, and let me have the money, he could have kept me quiet till the end of the school year, when he could have faced me with a fait accompli in the form of a piece of paper telling me that my position had been terminated.

  As it was, there was now going to be a very loud and noisy fight—something I don’t think he had expected.

  2

  Compared to the beginning of the confrontation at school, there came much better news at home. Bob Mills called me and suggested a monthly science column for Venture. I agreed enthusiastically, for this was just the sort of thing I wanted. I was to make each column twelve hundred words long and I was to be paid fifty dollars for each column. What’s more, I was to have an absolutely free hand on subject matter.

  I sat down immediately and wrote “Fecundity Limited,” my first article on the population problem. I sent it in on September 19, and it was taken at once.

  3

  On September 19, Bill Boyd finally told me that Lemon had told him, “Asimov, although a brilliant man, has done a great deal of harm to the school’s reputation, and he must go!” Bill was anxious to warn me that more was at stake than the twenty-five hundred dollars. There was “the Asimov problem,” as Lemon had called it.

  I knew that, and my comment in my diary was: “The simple bastards think they can solve it [the Asimov problem] easily, I suppose.” Not for a minute did I think they would win out over me.

  On the twentieth, Sinex told me he had talked to Keefer and had suggested trying to get me onto the graduate school payroll and therefore, in theory, out of the med school.

  To me this seemed to be an attempt by Sinex to set up a compromise that would keep me from exploding, as I threatened to do. I was certain, however, that Keefer would not allow this compromise and, for that matter, that I would not accept it if he did.

  I said, “If I were you, Dr. Sinex, I’d just bow out and stay out of trouble.” That indeed was what I wanted him to do. I knew that if he weren’t neutral he would have to be on Keefer’s side. There was no way in which he could risk his newly gotten job by coming out on my side.

  4

  I received copies of the third edition of Biochemistry and Human Metabolism on September 23, but it meant nothing to me. I put it on my shelves without even looking inside. Its arrival was symbolic of the final passing of the Walker years, that’s all.

  Meanwhile, all that month I had been racing to finish Sit with Death, my mystery novel. It was done on September 22, and I liked it a great deal. On Wednesday, September 25, I drove to New York to take it in personally. It had, not entirely coincidentally, a subplot in which the professorial hero struggled to obtain tenure.55

  I visited Horace Gold on the twenty-sixth for the first time in two years. He and Evelyn were divorced now.

  On the twenty-eighth, I drove into Long Island to see Stanley and Ruth at their house, which I saw for the first time—and I saw my nephew Eric for the first time, too.

  Then I drove home to West Newton. I was feeling quite ill, my muscles were aching, and I was coughing constantly. I was coming down with a bad siege of bronchitis. The next day was Sunday, and I spent most of it in bed in a semistupor.

  The next day I pulled myself together and went to school to hear Sinex lecture for the first time. He talked on protein structure to a class on “Special Topics.” He clearly knew his subject, but his lecturing was as disjointed as his ordinary speech, and I was quite certain the students were having difficulty following him.

  5

  On October 1, I checked at Keefer’s office to see if a decision had been reached on my twenty-five hundred dollars. It hadn’t, so I began my counterattack.

  I went to see Vice President McLaren of Boston University, who was in charge of administrative matters concerning grants, and stated my case as strongly as possible. I was in no mood to be diplomatic, so I told him what I thought of Keefer in straightforward terms and warned McLaren that if I did not get my twenty-five hundred dollars I would take the matter up with Washington and, if necessary, with the courts, and that I would not rest till I got the money.

  He urged me to wait before doing anything drastic, and I said that unless Keefer let me have the money, I would do whatever was necessary to get it, however drastic.

  6

  On the next day, October 2, I asked for an appointment to see Lamar Soutter, the dean who worked directly under Keefer. Soutter said he would come up and see me—and he did, almost at once.

  I closed and locked the door and said,56 “I have something to say, Dr. Soutter. I should say it to Dr. Keefer, but I will not speak to him, and I am going to have to depend on you to tell him this.

  “You may remember that a year and a half ago, you confronted me with a demand that I apologize in writing to a young lady. I did so, and then offered to resign, an offer you refused. I gave in at that time because, on reflection, I felt I was in the wrong; and I do not fight blindly when I am in the wrong.

  “This time, however, I am in the right, and nothing will budge me from my demand for justice.”

  I then went through the background of the conflict, stressing the fact that Dr. Yeager had come to me, had offered me the grant, had badgered me into taking it, and that Keefer had approved it. I explained that I was doing the book and that I had not touched one penny of the money till Yeager virtually ordered me to take it, and that now it had become a matter of principle.

  I said, “I have been out there in the harsh world of business, Dean Soutter. For nearly twenty years, I have been dealing with editors and publishers, and, on occasion, a mere handshake has closed a business deal involving far more money than this twenty-five hundred dollars. And not once in all that time have I been cheated and robbed; not once. There have been times when someone didn’t have the money to give me at once, but they never denied my right to have it, and they always paid me in the end.

  “Do you think that I will now sit still here in the cloistered halls of ivy and let myself be cheated out of money that a written and signed contract says is mine? Never!

  “You can be certain, Dean Soutter, that I will take this up with Washington, and I will not rest, nor give in, no matter how high up I have to go. Nor need you think that fear of losing my salary will deter me. I make far more money through my writing than I do at school, and I can afford to fight, however long it will take me. The publicity that it will entail will help sell my books, and I will make a profit out of it, but that same publicity can only hurt the medical school.”

  I was warming to the topic now, driven by the heat of my anger, and there was no pause in my eloquence—after all, I had been a professional writer for nineteen years and a public speaker for seven years, and words were my business.

  “And speaking of publicity, just consider what will happen if, by some chance, Keefer does take my money, and then succeeds in taking my job. What reason is there for doing so? Certainly, it isn’t because of any flaw in my teaching, since any student will tell you I am the best teacher in the school. You are welcome to attend my lectures if you doubt this. Keefer says it is because I write science books.

  “Well, when I came here to the medical school eight years ago, I had not yet published a single book, and was known to only a few thousand science-fiction readers. In the eight years I have been at the school, I have become internationally known and have published twenty-three books.”

  I emphasized the number and caught him. Dean Soutter had clearly not known the number. “Twenty-three?” he asked.

  “Twenty-three! And of those twenty-three, six are books on science that have been highly regarded. I am already considered an important and skillful science writer. I am one of the best science-fiction writers in the world, of course, but that is not what I am talking about. I am now an important and skillful science writer, and I don’t intend to stop. In the next eight years, I will have twenty-three more books,57 and I will be recognized as the best science writer in the world.58 I have fulfilled my ambitions to this point, Dean Soutter, and I assure you I will fulfill this one.

  “And when I am recognized as the best science writer in the world, I will be frequently asked by ordinary people, by newspaper reporters, by television hosts—and I am already frequently interviewed in newspapers and on radio and television—why on Earth I gave up my position at Boston University School of Medicine, and I will answer that I did not give it up, but that I was kicked out. And when they ask why, I will say that the school felt that my science writing would disgrace them. And they will laugh, Dean Soutter. They will laugh at the school, not at me.

  “Now you tell all this to Keefer, Dean Soutter, and tell him it will be better for him to give me my money.”

  Dean Soutter, who had said almost nothing through all this, nodded and left. What he told Keefer, I don’t know, but I got the twenty-five hundred dollars and had won the second round.

  7

  This time I knew it was only the second round and that Keefer would now be more than ever ready to fire me. So did everyone else, and I suddenly found that people at the school stopped seeing me. I had become a nonperson.

  It was each person’s obvious notion that by becoming too closely associated with me, he or she would be viewed as part of some “Asimov clique” and would be marked down for destruction as well. I didn’t blame them.

  One exception was Elizabeth Moyer, a professor in the Anatomy Department. Elizabeth was a tall, large woman who was, herself, an odd character. She was an excellent teacher, very popular with the students, and not entirely popular with the administration. She was a single woman who led a lonely life, and, as is natural under the circumstances, she filled her world with office politics and office gossip.

  She was delighted at seeing me tackle the administration, and I could always go down to her office when I felt the pressures mount, and there relax for an hour or so, while she told me what this person said and what that person said. I never depended entirely on what she told me, but it fulfilled a need for companionship that I wasn’t getting elsewhere. Even Bill Boyd, though his position was secure and he therefore did not have to avoid me, was doubtful solace, since his feeling—freely expressed to me—was that there was no way in which I could win.

  8

  On October 2, 1957, I had begun a new science-fiction story called “The Ugly Little Boy.” It dealt with a Neanderthal boy brought into the present by a time machine of sorts, and of a nurse who gradually came to love him.

  Merely writing the story, however, did not soothe me. My restlessness over the quarrel with Keefer required something more. I had boasted to Soutter concerning the number of my books, and I wanted some evidence that there were more to come. I had not yet heard about Sit with Death from Isabelle Taylor, so on October 4 I called her up.

  Isabelle hesitated and at first I thought she was going to ask for a revision. She wasn’t. She didn’t like the book at all. It was a flat rejection. It was the first time any book of mine, written for Doubleday, had been rejected outright by that firm.

  I was staggered. After I hung up the phone, I closed and locked my office door, went to my desk, and simply put my head down on my arms. Perhaps everything was changing. Perhaps my wild boast to Soutter had been too much and from now on everything would go downhill.

  Then I thought: No, I can’t let myself slide into despair. I may lose, but I won’t surrender.

  So, with the door still locked, I began to write a piece of comic verse. Before I got up from that desk, I had prepared a poem called “I Just Make Them Up, See!,” which, for multiplicity of rhyme and jocularity of meter, I have never surpassed. It was the funniest poem I had ever written, and I can’t resist quoting it now that I’ve explained the circumstances under which it was written. Here’s how it goes:

  I Just Make Them Up, See!

  Oh Dr. A.—

  Oh Dr. A.—

  There is something (don’t go ’way)

  That I’d like to hear you say.

  Though I’d rather die

  Than try

  To pry,

  The fact, you’ll find,

  Is that my mind

  Has evolved the jackpot question for today.

  I intend no cheap derision.

  So please answer with decision.

  And, discarding all your petty cautious fears,

  Tell the secret of your vision!

  How on earth

  Do you give birth

  To those crazy and impossible ideas?

  Is it indigestion

  And a question

  Of the nightmare that results?

  Of your eyeballs whirling,

  Twirling,

  Fingers curling

  And unfurling,

  While your blood beats maddened chimes

  As it keeps impassioned times

  With your thick, uneven pulse?

  Is it that, you think, or liquor

  That brings on the wildness quicker?

  For a teeny

  Weeny

  Dry martini

  May be just your private genie;

  Or perhaps those Tom and Jerries

  You will find the very

  Berries

  For inducing

  And unloosing

  That weird gimmick or that kicker;

  Or an awful

  Combination

  Of unlawful

  Stimulation,

  Marijuana plus tequila,

  That will give you just that feel o’

  Things a-clicking

  And unsticking

  As you start your cerebration

  To the crazy syncopation

  Of a brain a-tocking-ticking.

  Surely something, Dr. A.,

  Makes you fey

  And quite outré.

  Since I read you with devotion,

  Won’t you give me just a notion

  Of that shrewdly pepped-up potion

  Out of which emerge your plots?

  That wild secret bubbly mixture

  That has made you such a fixture

  In most favored s.f. spots—

  Now Dr. A.,

  Don’t go away—

  Oh, Dr. A.—

  Oh Dr. A.—

  9

  I sent the poem off to Tony Boucher the next day, and he took it with delight. The poem only earned me thirty dollars, but it was a very important thirty dollars. I took it as an indication that even when I seemed to hit bottom I could still write.

  And, after all, my science-fiction stories were still appearing. The December 1957 Galaxy contained “Galley Slave”59 The December 1957 F & SF contained “I Feel It in My Bones,” a science article on fallout and strontium-90 that was then much in the news, but that rapidly became outdated so that I never included it in any of my collections, and “Insert Knob A in Hole B.”60 The December 1957 Astounding included “The Whereabouts of Radioactivity” (which, again, appears in no collection of mine).

  The January 1958 issue of Fred Pohl’s new magazine Star Science Fiction (its first and only issue) contained “Spell My Name with an ‘S,’ ”61 which Fred, with incredible obtuseness, retitled “S as in Zebatinsky.” You can be sure I changed the title back in my collection.

  Most important of all, the January 1958 issue of Venture contained “Fecundity Limited,”62 which I hoped would be the first of an open-ended series of such articles.

  10

  Yet this was the final explosion of science fiction. That portion of my writing career in which I dealt chiefly with science fiction was coming to an end, and “The Ugly Little Boy,” which I was in the process of writing, was to be the last of a series of perhaps 150 stories (including a few articles) that I had placed in science-fiction magazines in a steady stream over the past twenty years.

  What happened was that on October 4, 1957, the day I called Isabelle, discovered the rejection of Sit with Death, and wrote, “I Just Make Them Up, See!,” the Soviet Union sent up the first artificial satellite, Sputnik I.

  The United States went into a dreadful crisis of confidence over the fact that the Soviet Union had gotten there first and berated itself for not being interested enough in science. And I berated myself for spending too much time on science fiction when I had the talent to be a great science writer.

  From that time onward, it was science that chiefly interested me, and though I continued to write science fiction now and then, it was only now and then. Never again, after the fall of 1957, was science fiction to form the main portion of my output.63

  Sputnik also served to increase the importance of any known public speaker who could talk on science and, particularly, on space, and that meant me. I was hunted down, for this reason, by a lecture agent named Harry Walker.

  I had lunch with him on October 15, and he told me he could get me a lecture a week at $100 each. Of course, Harry was going to take 30 per cent of each check for his services, but $70 a week meant $3,640 a year, better than half my school salary, and Harry assured me that with time my fees would go up. I agreed to consider the matter and called Willy Ley to make sure that the 30 per cent fee was legitimate. Willy assured me it was.